Gadgetory

laptops are great devices they're light portable and have the potential to be powerful workstations unfortunately they also overheat have limited functionality compared to full desktop PCs and can often be overpriced today we examine a client in search of a better solution for all of our multitasking needs on this episode of system config my name is Jennifer I live here and I need a high-end gaming PC I plan to be using the Adobe master suite as well as some really graphics intensive games currently I do not have a desktop PC I have a laptop that I had to purchase in a rush it's really underpowered and I've never really been happy with it I didn't really have a budget going into this build instead I've just kind of been collecting parts over time and I decided to cap it off at about $1500 the goal that I have in mind for this new system is to have a really solid high-end gaming PC that's also a workstation and is aesthetically pleasing to have in my room so I turned to Kyle for his advice and system-config for the build alright guys so I have cordially invited Jenny to well our house because for those of you didn't know we're actually roommates and co-workers as well but I also asked her to keep her laptop at home and not and not take it out anywhere so that we can take a look at it so we know kind of where we're coming from and where we're going to so this is a Danish laptop it's actually a very sleek laptop I think it's about a year or two old the specs on it it's got a Core i5 processors a mobile processor of course it's an i5 30 to 30 M and it's got 6 gigs of RAM it's running 8.1 currently Windows 8.1 why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got this laptop and kind of why you got it well I had to make a really quick decision about purchasing this laptop my previous laptop was getting pixel cancer in the screen it was just spreading and getting worse and worse and eventually became unusable terminal uh that happened while I was in the middle of researching my master's thesis and so I literally had to make a snap decision I had about six hundred dollars to spend and this was the best laptop I could afford at the time gotcha so it was kind of like spur of the moment really impulsive Biden how much time to research exactly I knew I wanted something with an SSD so would have the quick boot up time which my previous laptop was really lack and then I also wanted it to have a lot of features like USB 3.0 ports I needed HDMI also it has SD card reader in the bottom which are all must-haves for me plus an optical drive because at the time I didn't have a TV and this was my entertainment center exactly it was everything but as time has gone on I'm becoming less and less happy with it there's a few things about the form factor I don't really like particularly where the touchpad is located in relation to the spacebar on the keypad has been very annoying and also it just can't keep up with the types of things I want to do now with a computer I think there have been a couple times when we've just been sitting here in the waiting room like I'll be watching TV or something and all of a sudden in the corner all I hear you could like ah what's wrong with this thing just like I don't look over it it's just you with the laptop and it's just like oh gosh she needs a new computer really badly I think you you were telling me earlier that you do some photography yeah and you usually upload the pictures to your computer and put them online and you kind of want to do some more editing with them as well and have that bandwidth to actually pump out some some cool pictures right and so I have tried to run Adobe on this laptop and it just it was a dog it couldn't handle it and then also when we did your live stream it couldn't even run the simplest games and so I had to run back to work actually pick up a gaming laptop so that we could have an extra gaming machine for that day and that was when it was really I started planning with you right building a PC when we couldn't run hotline Miami we knew something had to change because we're clearly we're working with Intel HD graphics so it's integrated there's nothing fancy about it so it's a it's very limiting for you right now so keep it for portability I mean it's still a good good laptop you know for everything it is but I think you need something a little bit more powerful and I think we have something in store for you today here on system config so yet are you ready to take a look at the hardware that we're gonna be using for your bill let's look at the hardware Kyle all right let's do it all right so at the forefront of this build we have the core i7 4770k from Intel choosing this part was a no-brainer since jenny was able to participate in Intel's retail edge program which lets people like Jenny who work in the tech industry take quizzes about Intel trivia in order to get killer deals on Intel products after passing enough quizzes Intel processors and ultrabooks Jenny was able to score this flagship Haswell CPU for just over a hundred bucks which I'm sure is turning many of you green with envy right about now speaking of green the motherboard of choice is the gigabyte g1 sniper z87 among all the advantages of the z87 chipset it also features a creative sound Core 3d quad core processor and a qualcomm atheros killer LAN chip set for automatic packet prioritization while gaming throwing gigabytes easy to overclocking software and a striking aesthetic and you've got a board with enough nifty gaming features that will make Jenny's transition into PC gaming an enjoyable experience for memory we turn to Kingston for one of their HyperX black dual channel kits they're reliable they've got cool low profile heat sinks what more could you want well I suppose a lot of things but for Jenny's needs these should have no problem getting the job done rated at 1600 megahertz these 2 8 gig modules give us a combined total of 16 gigs now when Jenny mentioned to me that she would definitely be doing some overclocking with this system I wanted to make sure she had an adequate cooling solution so here we have Corsairs h75 liquid cooler successor to the popular H 60 it features a 120 millimeter radiator at 25 millimeters thick and comes with a pair of their awesome SP pwm fans now I usually avoid anything that stands for malevolent evil and destruction but the power color devil r9 270x may be the only exception this card uses the same chip as its last gen counterpart the Radeon HD 7870 but sports a slightly higher clock speed and a much improved memory clock frequency power colours cooler design on this card is simply wicked and has been said to do a nice job at keeping thermals down which is absolutely crucial given the chassis we'll be building it as you'll soon see here we revisit Kingston with their 120 gig hyper x3k SSD these days I think it's safe to say there's little to no excuse not to have an SSD in your system if you have a budget close to Jenny's with the drive of this size she'll be able to install her OS and frequently used applications like Chrome and Photoshop to speed up her day-to-day tasks but until she upgrades the capacity of her trusty mand she'll probably have to store the humble beginnings of her steam library onto a mechanical drive for this we've chosen a WD black 2 terabyte hard drive besides all of her games Jenny will need ample storage for all over high-res images from her photo shoot escapades and since she'll be frequently transferring data to the drive the snappy seek times and read/write speeds at the WD black should be a good fit powering this system is the eco-friendly in win greenie series 6 50 watt power supply now in today's day and age anything with eco-friendly branding tends to carry a rather wimpy connotation thanks Prius but this unit is just as capable as any in its class it's got Japanese bolt capacitors 80 plus bronze certification and also came in a 100% recyclable package which made for one very happy Jenny okay I'll give you guys a second to laugh or throw your hands in the air and yell at the screen whatever you got to do upon seeing the case choice for this build but rest assured when I tell you that I can explain why we decided to go with a two hundred and eighty dollar case for a $1500 rig after seeing the last episode of system-config anyone wanted to participate in a future episode so they set Jenny up with their own flagship case the 904 originally we had picked out the BitFenix phenom for this build but one glance at the exquisite design of the 904 and Jenny transformed into Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and I can't blame her it does look pretty incredible but since this was a last-minute change to our plan we didn't have a chance to do much research on this case which might come back to haunt us during the build I can only hope that we managed to fit all the components inside without shattering that beautiful tempered-glass side panel and that ladies and gentlemen is the collection of parts will be using for Jenny system it's worth noting that she also picked up the key for Windows 8.1 putting the total cost for this build just over her $1,500 budget now throw the retail edge program and the sponsor 904 in the mix and we're looking at a 1520 $4 build that she was able to get for just over a grand in an admirable attempt to be economical she decided to put the money she saved towards a new camera to take higher quality photos but now that we have all the parts on the table it's time to put this robust yet questionably unbalanced rig together you Oh alright ladies and gentlemen we have just finished the build in the in win 904 computer chassis and my first instinct is to say went smoothly but it clearly did not there were a lot of issues I think maybe Jenny choosing to go with the in win 904 at the last minute the day before the shoot may have had something to do with some of the complications we encountered during the build I don't know what do you think Jenny I think that it probably would have been wiser decision to research the case a little bit more before I made the snap judgment to bring it home instead of the BitFenix phenom which I had originally chosen for the build and that created problems in that moment one of which was the radiator which we thought was gonna go in effortlessly because we saw that the fan mounting points actually I just I was watching Dimitri's video from hardware canucks he did a beautiful video on this case that was in the five minutes before we started this right before we press record I was like I should probably find out something about this case because I have no idea what it's about and so I didn't really have time to watch the entire video I'm sorry to mitri it was a great video though from what I saw so I was kind of skimming through it I missed the part where he said it's a 90 millimeter fan mount on the back of the case so I'm just assuming well every case these days has a 120 millimeter nope no it doesn't so we pulled out the radiator the h75 and I was like we're not gonna be able to shoot system configure today it's not gonna fit and then by the grace of God we found the miracle mounting point at the bottom of the case that does house a 120 millimeter fan but I don't can accommodate up to 140 millimeter fan she did do her research 10 minutes before the shoot guys that just proves it so luckily we were able to get the radiator in there somehow it's pretty miraculous this does look a little bit awkward but honestly it's it's pinching just barely I don't think it's really in keeping any current so I think the temperature should be just fine for reference we've got Sleeping Dogs here we are running a game and we're getting pretty decent frames here we're also going to throw those up and everything's running really smooth I did want to say one thing about this build is that is incredibly quiet you can barely hear it I don't know if it's picking up on the mics at all probably not if you do hear it's probably my system in the background that you're hearing but really the only thing that I can year like the two Corsair fans because that's those are really the only fans in there besides the power supply with power supplies eco-friendly and spins a really low rpm everything is really really Talent honestly I think this has been a really great build for us all and I think that's going to wrap it up for this episode of system-config guys so if you guys are interested in being on the show send me an email to letters to awesomesauce at gmail.com and you could be on the next episode that's just some config thank you all for watching guys subscribe to the channel if you haven't already give me a like and Jenny would you like to sign us off and say say goodbye goodbye everybody thanks for watching you